It was a busy day for me today. Watching Manchester United beat Arsenal on FSC (see posts passim regarding the old country and being a dual national), the weekly shopping, taking the dog out for a walk or three, Yankees and Red Sox on ESPN, and posting this.
OK, not so hard a Sunday.
And flicking through the news I see that Hillary Clinton decided to go door to door in West Scranton to show how small town Pennsylvania really is.
Only thing is: someone forgot to tell Hillary this ain't no small town.
Even the international press has eaten the story that Hillary fed to them:
SCRANTON - Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton toured a working-class neighborhood on Sunday and kept up the attack on rival Barack Obama's remarks about small-town voters.
OK, so why do I say this isn't the kind of town that Obama was talking about?
Well, Scranton never had it good since some time around 1920. Coal and steam was Scranton's big technological things. Anthracite central, and the railroads (Scranton is still known as Steamtown: the downtown mall is The Mall At Steamtown). So I don't think there are many of the bitter people that lost their jobs here in Scranton because they're all dead by now.
Very hard to be bitter about anything nowadays if you were alive when prohibition happened.
The other thing is Scranton's size. In the last Census, says Wiki, the metro area alone had over 31,000 households. It's the sixth biggest city in a very populous State. Jean Kerr came from here. So did Jason Miller (ever seen The Exorcist?!). It gets Broadway-quality productions year-round in the Scranton Cultural Center. It has its own Philharmonic. It has an international airport, and it's also home to the AAA team of the New York Yankees. And has a very vibrant night life and (from what I have seen around the place) an active gay scene too.
Yep, typical small town PA, Hillary. Seeing Shelley Duncan play first base at PNC Field before going to see Evita, very small town.
Cough.